Saturday, January 31, 2009

on intellectual property laws but I'm sure its just fine if I steal a designer's ideas for my own wardrobe. Penney's do it all the time. This is a little sloppy blogging because I made this stuff a while ago but I just started thinking about it again after visiting the Marc by Marc Jacobs in Paris. In which I bought almost all the cheapy accesories, including a one euro ring, nooice. But alas it was not the ring I stole (that infact would have just been regular thievery rather than anything to do with intellectual property), I'm talking bout all the way back to his spring summer 08 collection when Mr Jacobs went a bit mad for the auld lego, making accesories and all sorts. This piece of thievery was pertpetrated while trying to decide what to wear for the December TAC whose theme was toybox (I don't know bout you but I find TAC night the most stressful of all, wardrobe wise). AHAH LEGO brillers I'll go as LEGO, it was cheap( two squid from the pound shop) and easy (bit of imagination and lots of glue), unfortunately it's not very durable, as the evening went on my accesories got more and more sparse, i s a good thing the night started with them being ridiculously large.So for two euro I made myself LEGO earings, bow tie, belt buckle and my favourite of all an enormous ring. I wholeheartedly endorse stealing for yourself, or should I really say being inspired by others while putting your own original splashes in too (yeah that sounds better).

Friday, January 30, 2009

So after a very unreasonable 10-hour-long trip home from Paris on Thursday, im still absolutely exhausted. I wont go into details abut our holiday quite yet but i will show you the lovely collection of magazines that i picked up in the airport on our way back. I have a problem when it comes to magazines, i spent €100 extra on baggage fees just to get my magazines back to Dublin when i moved back from Paris in June. This time however, i was more sensible and brought them on as hand luggage.

This is my favourite french fashion magazine. The layout is perfect and they have English translations of all the articles in the back. The most expensive at €5 but worth it for the wonderful shoots and great articles.

This is unbelievably cheap at just €1. Many magazines are cheaper on the continent but i have absolutely no idea how they manage to charge so little for such a high quality mag. Dita Von Teese did a little shoot and they have a men's section at the back with some very attractive male models. There is also a new men's version which i hear is top notch.

Jalouse is for uber-cool french teenagers. The picture is from a Goonies inspired shoot. It epitomises the stylish teenager you always wanted to be, but never were. And it's another bargain at just €3.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Our flight is very very early in the morning so this is almost certainly the last time we'll be posting before we get back. I've already packed Catherine,but neither of us our bringing laptop's so we'll report back fully when we get home next Thursday.I can't wait to get to Paris, we mightlove it a little too much

Monday, January 19, 2009

We must say a little thank you to Anne-marie for inviting us to the 6th Fashion Bloggers Brunch in the fabulous Dylan Hotel on Sunday. What better way to spend your Sunday than discussing fashion over Eggs Onassis, or delicious pancakes. I certainly can't think of any.

When i got home i popped on my lovely new Clodagh McKenna apron and pranced around the kitchen for a while, pitty im not much of a cook...

This rather odd picture below is to show-off Cillian of Male Modes amazing sense of style, great purple shirt, lovely grey trousers and then these fantastic fußball socks. I must add that this photo was taken with Cillian's consent, even though it might appear otherwise.

I love Picasso. Like, i really love Picasso. So much so, that i painted Girl Before a Mirror on my bedroom wall when i was 17. At the time my mom warned me that id be sick of it in a couple of weeks but every day when i wake up im still completely in love with it.

It's a little bit like how i dress, plain base, with lots of colour. Another example of art influencing fashion is the Yves Saint Laurent dress inspired by the work of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. I just love how the different coloured fabrics are all pieced together by the grid seams.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Hermès has adapted it's signature carré (square silk scarf) to pay homage to Josef Albers series of paintings "Homage to the Square". The french fashion house will create six Albers inspired scarves and produce just 200 editions of each design. Coming in at €2,000 each this is something I will certainly just be looking at on our trip to Paris next week.

"Accomplished as a designer, photographer, typographer, printmaker and poet, Albers is best remembered for his work as an abstract painter and theorist. Most famous of all are the hundreds of paintings and prints that make up the series Homage to the Square. In this rigorous series, begun in 1949, Albers explored chromatic interactions with flat colored squares arranged concentrically on the canvas." Each of the paintings were printed edge-to-edge with painstaking effort to ensure no hue overlap, which is the same technique that will be used in printing the scarves.

Fashion as art and art as fashion. The French always manage to get it spot on.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

"A return to street chic, a Paris-London state of mind, a musical inclination, fashion as a manifesto and a vestiaire for two."

My favourite Parisian info website Go Go Paris alerted me to this quite lovely new french brand, The Kooples. Designed for couples, the male and female collections fit perfectly together. The brand epitomises the Parisian obsession with Pete Doherty and British rock, which sounds like it would be a bad thing but it actually turned out quite well. It's very APC meets American Apparel, and it looks very good.

The brand describes itself as Parisian with a London twist as they were guided by Savile Row tailors, Norton & Sons. Which means not only are these pieces very stylish but they're also bound to be very well made. And, with most of the pieces on the website 50% off at the moment, a great bargain as well!

Friday, January 9, 2009

I've taken to lugging a lot of necessary crap around college, which means I now have to either carry one huge weekend break size bag or a couple of canvas bags on each arm (I've also decided you can tell what year of college someone is in by how much stuff they carry around). The baggage dilemma continues because I've been trying to decide what to bring on our Antwerp/ Paris adventure. I'm utterly sick of my back pack, I hate it and actually may have thrown it out in a fit of rage after coming home from Russia. I do have this lovely old luggage but it's really more of an ' I'm driving to a fancy hotel and I'll never actually have to carry this bag at all thats what other people are for' kind of bag because I'm a lady and I need they earth to help carry my luggage, I'll probably find some sort of wheely thing. But the bag on the left is definitely coming as its the exact dimensions for hand luggage, fantastic. Now I just have to decide whats going to go in the bags.Stupid packing.Lil

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Now, normally id be thinking "what a stupid question, i simply could not choose one colour in particular!" Or so i thought. So, it's January and time to organise all the stuff you've been putting of, and for me it's my wardrobe.

I was so jealous when Lillian got her new wardrobe, it really is a masterpiece. It has double doors and every dress has it's own hanger. And, im not exagerrating when i say she has an entire closet dedicated to accessories, and coats of course. Whereas i am stuck with a teeny tiny single door built in wardrobe that spits things out at me every time i open it. Tomorrow, i will head to the auction rooms in Rathmines to find something a little more spacious.

So, today as i was organising my wardrobe and deciding what should stay and what should go i noticed that i had a very large amount of green and red. Im not just talking a few extra pieces, but far more green and red than all of the other colours put together. So i decided to put them all together. This is colour coordination to the MAX.

As is often the case Catherine and myself decided we loved bow ties at the exact same time and both went a bit mad for em, thats why I bought her that glittery one she posted about down there. I however don't have the funds to be buying lots of bow ties for myself so I made mine instead.Here's the first one, made of black leather.I made another crocodile skin one but I ended up giving it to my uncle for Christmas, I realised a little too late in the day that I hadn't bought a present for him.I have far too much material left over because shockingly 1/4 of a meter is the smallest amount you can buy but thats enough to make about 20 bowties. I'm going to have to come up with inventive ways to use up the rest of the fabric, I'm thinking black heart earings. I also intend on making a reversible hood of clashing tartans but I'm back in college and essays are due so we'll see when all this actually gets done.

Well its not so new, lack of a camera and time has meant I haven't been able to post about it till now. Like Catherine I went to the Style Club (when we find a hairdresser we tend to go to her in packs and stay until one of us gets a bad haricut ), but it took a good half an hour of convincing Katie who would be cutting my long boring hair that I wanted a v cut around my ear, worked out in the end though. My boss saw it for the first time yesterday and described the new cut as' Em fun?', but if she liked it I'd probably be doing something wrong. Also in the photo are my new Enfant Terrible earings bought because the new haircut really needs mahussive dangling from my ear.

Monday, January 5, 2009

I got the Nutcracker on dvd which is my favourite ballet and the Chanel Collections and Creations book is simply amazing. The chocolate fountain on the other hand, while it looks amazing and is such a novelty, is an absolute nightmare to clean.

Assignment 55: Photograph a significent outfit "What I was wearing when he saw me from the ferris wheel (and my heart beat a million miles an hour and I blew a kiss to him)." Alana Fragar Sydney, AUSTRALIA

As a little project for the New Year ive decided to complete one of the assignments from the learning to love you more website. It came to my attention during the summer when i was browsing through the Winding Stair bookshop on Ormond Quay. There are 70 assignments in total, ranging from braiding someone else's hair to describing what you want done to your body when you die. The website has received 8,000 submissioons since it was started in 2002 by performace artist Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. The book was then published in 2007 and gives a nice overview of the whole project with the list of assignments included.

"Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature of these assignments is intended to guide people towards their own experience."

July is also known for "You, Me and Everyone we know", the 2005 film she wrote, directed and starred in which i quite enjoyed.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

I got an email today from a friend encouraging me to have a look at Devastee, a french design duo that it turns out are a bit good. Ophelie Klere & Francois Alary's website is all very dark and gloomy with an awful lot of references to death which, i have my reservations about. But, despite the sombre website, the clothes really appealed to me. The new collection is all a bit french women in their 30's meets a more modern nautical chic. And i especially like that they've used mostly black and white despite the fact that it's a summer collection.

Summer 2009

Speaking of death gimmicks, the same friend brought me to Noir Kennedy in Paris that is famous for its interior, skulls and coffins abound. Now, as much as i love gimmicks, and i really do, this didn't do it for me at all.

Dead rats in the window display, you get the idea. But, they do sell April 77 jeans so all is forgiven.

Moving on. As i was browsing through the Devastee collections i spotted a very familiar face. Antonia Campbell-Hughes, ex-designer and now actress has been doing a spot of modelling for them.

Embalming Party Winter 2008/2009

It'd been ages since i thought about this girl. I used to absolutely adore her clothes. When i was 17, i tried on this dress in that really nice shop that used to be, and perhaps still is in the Swan Shopping Centre in Rathmines. I remember thinking, "this is the dress i want for my debs". It was about €200, which seemed like an absolute fortune at the time.

Spring Summer 2005

It seems that she got a good bit of press coverage when she was designing as i remember cutting out pictures of her designs from magazines and sticking them in my fashion scrap book.

Spring Summer 2004

Autumn Winter 2003/2004

However, what i find most intruiging however is the photo in which she is wearing a top designed by someone i went to school with. The only reason i know this is because we used to have photos of end of year projects that were particularly good up on the walls in the corridor. And this pink top was framed and hanging outside the science lab.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Im quite excited to read that Katie Grand, founder of Pop magazine and who helped launch Dazed and Confused has moved over to Conde Nast to launch a new "high-end" and "edgy" fashion magazine called LOVE. Beth Ditto has already been shot for the inaugural cover of the magazine which is due to launch on February 19th. Can't say im too thrilled that Beth has been chosen for he cover but im curious to see how it will turn out.

Editor and stylist at Pop, Grand was offered the position of creative director of Mulberry last year but turned down the position, perhaps she knew she would just be too busy with her new project.

It seems that Conde Nast had made a bid for the magazine but it was turned down by publishers Bauer who also run Heat and Grazia. Money may have been an issue for Grand when it came to making a decision about moving as she has said in the past about Pop shoots that "Often the photographers are using their own money."

Although there were rumours that Pop would not continue without Katie, who has taken her whole team to LOVE, they are currently recruiting new staff to relaunch the magazine in Autumn of this year.

About Me

Lil

One third of MMK, Lil loves music and can be found djing for the likes of Skinny Wolves or helping the lovely Nicky out down in Doyles. She has an enormous collection of coats and a wardrobe dedicated entirely to accessories.

Catherine

She studied journalism and french so she can be the next Carine Roitfeld. Catherine loves symmetrical hairstyles, colour coordination and Style magazine, of which she has more than 100 copies stored safely in her magazine chest.

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We do not own all the photographs used on this blog. Credit is noted and links to the original sources are provided where possible. If you own any photographs used and would like them removed then please let us know.